This is the eleventh in a series of analyses of the election results to see whether or not the Cubans are abandoning the GOP. Other posts in this series can be found here.
The chart above shows the 2004 and 2008 election results in the 6 zip codes I’ve analyzed. These are 6 of the most Cuban zip codes in the county.
As you can see the net gain for the Democratic candidate was 4.4%. Hardly the monumental shift that the local and national media was projecting. In fact voters in these precincts preferred John McCain to Obama by a margin of more than 2-1. I have no doubt that even this minor shift was driven partly by younger Cubans who voted for Obama but it’s not clear whether their votes were driven by ideology (meaning that they identify themselves as liberal Democrats) or simply because of anti-Bush sentiment, the economy and the charisma of Obama.
Notes: The population statistics are from the 2000 census and are therefore outdated but are the best I could obtain.
Also note the vast differences in total votes from one election to the other. That’s because absentee ballots were handled differently in 2004. They were attributed to “absentee precincts” rather than the traditional precinct the voter belonged to. In 2008 all ballots are attributed to the voter’s precinct.
…an island on the net without a bearded dictator
